The key is: Which function needs to be effective? Purchasing and accounting structures? Management reporting? Advertising, campaigning and revenues?
Sure, those have to be taken care of .... but the main functionality of a charitable organisation is to serve the members/service users who seek support from it (or to campaign to avoid the need for people to seek support from it) ... and it should start from the most individual level of need – ‘bottom up, not top-down’ as it was once known – but appears now to be an ethos terribly out-of-date!
I have confessed before to being a banker in a previous life! Shareholding companies, mutual organisations ..... the key word is
stakeholders ..... commercially or otherwise ....
Who owns the greatest stake in a support group? In a local branch of any charity? Those who run it, or those who
need it? That, to me, is the fundamental principle which is missing from this type of restructuring ..... and sadly replication of what is happening countrywide in other social areas .... with who else to fill the gaps? But that’s outside a CEO’s remit to worry about what is happening elsewhere beyond their organisation and take social responsibility for their ridiculous salary?
Karen, x
(Not personal, Beverley!
)